A sweet and beautiful rain
by Sadhana
Summary: Cloud can't sleep in Costa del Sol because the rain is keeping him awake. Takes place during the timeline of the game. A symbolic piece more than anything else. Slightly Cleris.


The rain that came through Costa del Sol that night was a hallowed relief, as if heaven itself was leaking, after the hot and painful sun during the day. It had been the kind of heat that sinks over you, and suddenly it's too difficult to exert energy. An incapacitating heat.

Cloud couldn't sleep that night. All the energy he should've had was catching up with him now, tossing and turning. He flipped over onto his other side, and looked out the window of the rented room in this vista. The rain poured over the windows, fat drops trailing down the cool glass. There was no thunder or lightening. Just rain. Rain for hours and hours. It was the kind of rain that felt like it would never stop. Just forever in the gloom of rain, even if he was aware how much of a blessing this rain was, even if it worked to cool down the burning town tomorrow. Still, it rained and rained.

Flinging the covers off in frustration, Cloud sat up on the edge of the bed.

_Pat. Pat, pat, pat._ The rain was pattering against the window. Was there no end to it?

Cloud shoved his feet inside his boots, and tied the laces. After getting dressed, he opened the door gingerly – the others were all still sleeping, readying themselves for another day of traveling tomorrow – and crept out of the vista into the empty streets of Costa del Sol.

The unpaved roads looked like they were melting, the compact dirt now a tan mud. Although it had only been a few hours since he was last out in this road, it looked almost unrecognizable to him. The children that ran about in it at all hours of the day were gone, and the shop-owners in the markets had abandoned their posts. So much emptiness. Even the houses which were surely packed with sleeping townspeople seemed abandoned. A dark dull gloom had shrouded the town of sun and life.

Splattering mud as he went, Cloud walked through the streets, down towards the docks. He was unaware of his reasons for it, but he just felt the compulsion to go there. His legs marched forward under some unknown authority. Maybe it was this emptiness driving him towards the ocean, its vastness and its eternity.

Cloud walked down the length of one of the docks, the panels of wood creaking beneath his steps, and stood at the edge of the sea. It looked black at this time of night, and its tempestuous waves roared dully with the howling wind of the storm.

And then, through the shadow of night and the mask of an impenetrable and unending rain, he finally saw someone. On an adjacent dock, a figure sat facing the sea, its legs folded up against its chest. So the town wasn't really as deserted as it seemed after all. But wait... it was Aerith.

"Aerith?" he called out to her. It was the first thing he had said all night, and he forgot how inaudible a voice would be in this rain, but Aerith immediately looked up from where she sat. She smiled as Cloud hastened from the dock he stood on to the one she sat at. "What are you doing out her? You're soaked!" Aerith was completely drenched, the large bangs hanging in front of her face were plastered against her skin. _He_ was completely drenched. But she seemed _so_ calm.

"I couldn't sleep." Her smile was _so_ at peace, as if she wasn't sitting in the midst of a storm at all, though drops of water did run over her silken lips. "You couldn't either?"

"Oh... Umm, no. Not really." He sat down next to her.

"This is such a beautiful rain," she sighed.

"It seems depressing to me. It's like a sadness that'll never stop." Cloud had half-expected her to be surprised by this, but she laughed _so_ softly. "What?"

"Oh, nothing." Her voice carried that same inflection as when she teased him. "So what made you venture out here?"

"Nothing in particular." This was somewhat a lie. _Something_ had called him out here, though he wasn't sure what; but it was something. "What brings you out in the rain?"

"I heard the Planet, almost like it was singing." She pushed her dripping bangs away from her face. "So are we heading after Sephiroth tomorrow?"

"That's the general plan."

"We'll find him. I think it's fated. I hear the voices of the Cetra urging us onward; they know what has to be done." Aerith unconsciously ran her hand over the bow in her hair, and the materia attached to it.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean... as fated as it was to rain today and as fated as it is to be beautiful day tomorrow because of it... it's also fated that we find Sephiroth. Such a beautiful rain... You shouldn't be saddened by it when it's so beautiful, so pure."

Cloud stared at her with his Mako-glowing eyes, and Aerith smiled _so_ sweetly...


End file.
